Why this blog ???
or
Intro to My EIGHT Favorite Books
My intention for this series of blog posts was to give you reviews of my EIGHT all-time favorite books. Those of you who know me, knew I couldn’t do it. Not just EIGHT. Please keep checking back and we’ll see where the list leads....
I started the list in time for Christmas shopping of 2010, making it part of Reflections From My Praying Chairs blog http://myprayingchairs.blogspot.com/ Then Christmas, cedar fever, and miscellaneous other things wedged themselves in beetween.
Because I love certain books and truly want you to meet the authors and to know WHY I love these particular editions, the posts cried out for their own specific place. During four days of temperatures in the teens this week *shiver*, I launched a separate blog, Liz’s Favorite Books.
Of course, I love BOOKS. Period. Paper, ink, words on a paper page. The sound of turning pages, and the touch, smell, and feel of a book is, to me, life. Yeah, I'm old fashioned and while I do a LOT of on-line reading, I can’t soak in the tub and find out why Carrie planted basil; I can’t snuggle under the covers and with my beloved yellow hi-lighter mark a memorable passage. I am certain that I—yes, even I—could become addicted to an electronic reading machine when I travel. But on the back porch, rocking by the fire, or holding a baby, please give me something with pages to turn.
Is this blog waging a one-women-war to keep “real” books alive? I don’t have enough energy or years left so while I wish I could slow progress down a bit, as long as people read, I’ll not argue the mode.
Both my husband and I and most of our children, grands, and greats are, to grossly understate, lifetime avid readers. Our modest, middle-class American home immodestly displays far too many books. I’ve selected eight books to begin this journey of Favorite Books [Just for the record, Microsoft Word’s synonym list for FAVORITE includes beloved, preferred, much loved.]
My earliest memory is the sound of my mother’s voice as she read The Bobsey Twins books to me. She read as we rocked on nippy fall afternoons, snuggled under a blanket on cold winter afternoons, moved back and forth in the porch swing on spring afternoons, and watched the leaves under the Sycamore tree on summer afternoons. Mother majored in elocution and, before marriage, taught children the art of speaking clearly with emotion, feeling, expression, and passion to match the words. Through the years, every word she read aloud carried us on a new adventure. After some 68 years, one of the original Bobsey books from my childhood still resides on my hall bookshelf.
As a born and trained lover of books and words, it was natural that as I penned secret journals and my words began to slowly surface in publications, I also read to my own children, foster children, grandchildren and great grandsons through a million miles of rocking, snuggling, traveling, waiting in doctor’s offices, and swinging on the back porch.
My list of favorites is sorted by category and is narrowed from all those I’ve enjoyed, studied, re-read, hated, and forgotten over the past six to eight years or so.
My posts will include a short review of each book, how I came to have it, and why it is beloved to me.
Perhaps you’ll discover one of your favorites on my list or will be intrigued to get a copy for yourself, a friend, or a family Christmas gift.
By the way, if you are local, I highly recommend The Closer Walk Christian Bookstore, Fredericksburg, Texas. If your favorite book, or mine, isn’t on her shelves, Sheila will order it (or them!!) for you. Sheila a special and dear friend, a co-founder and active member of our Hill Country Women of Words writing group. http://www.thecloserwalk.com Supporting your local merchants—wherever you are—is a grand thing to do!
Blessings & Happy Reading--
from One Book Worm to Another
Liz
“Now let all of us be like the shepherds and go in haste to find the Savior, Christ the Lord and then, in awe and wonder, return to our work, glorifying and praising God for all we have seen and heard.”
(from Luke 2 in God’s own Book)
